August 14, 2015 | Wiley Wiggins

Fantastic Arcade Announces The 2015 First Wave Lineup!

Fantastic Fest movies are certainly nourishing to the soul, but every truly fantastic movie theater ought to have its own Arcade, and Fantastic Fest boasts the most unusual arcade the world- Fantastic Arcade!

For the sixth year we'll be bringing you the best new indie videogames, plus talks, tournaments and special events, but this year we'll be bringing you six games in custom arcade cabinets that will ALL be ORIGINAL titles premiering for play at Fantastic Arcade 2015. Austin's indie game collective, Juegos Rancheros, with help from Humble Bundle, set some of the most explosively creative talents in games loose, and today we're proud to announce those new titles, and ten additional Spotlight game submissions that make up our first wave of games!

This year's six original Fantastic Arcade game cabinets are:

Wheels of Aurelia (Santa Ragione)Wheels of Aurelia (pictured at top) is a narrative road trip game set in the roaring Italian 70's from the creators of FOTONICA & MirrorMoon EP. Half racing game and half interactive fiction, it tells the story of Lella, a restless woman driving on the roads of the western coast of Italy, the famous Via Aurelia.

Hellmouth (Thu Tran and Ivan Safrin)Hellmouth is a competitive cooking game where players collect ingredients from a hellish death course and cook it to perfection to feed Satan. Hellmouth is co-created by Ivan Safrin and Thu Tran, the mind behind the Independent Film Channel television show Food Party, and host of the "Barfcade" at Fantastic Arcade 2014.

HOKY (Jan Willem Nijman and Kitty Calis)HOKY is arcade action on ice for up to four players, from the developers who separately helped bring you Nuclear Throne and Action Henk, and who together created Adventure Minute, the winner of Fantastic Arcade's Adventure Time Gamemaking Frenzy in 2012.

Risky Bison (Justin Smith)
Risky Bison is a game about managing the financial affairs of a herd of buffalo, created by “the game developer’s game developer” Justin Smith, best known as the designer behind Enviro Bear 2000 and Desert Golfing.

Alea (Paloma Dawkins, Cale Bradbury, Caila Thompson-Hannant)
Co-created by Paloma Dawkins, best known as the artist behind KO-OP Mode’s Gardenarium, Alea is a hiking simulator & experience of infinity, and a reminder of the endless light and dark currently occurring in all directions, at all times. Just don't die and you should be okay.

In addition, ten Arcade Spotlight titles selected from this year’s game submissions will be showcased during Fantastic Fest.

The 2015 Fantastic Arcade Spotlight section consists of:

Secret Legend (Andrew Shouldice)
An homage to classic games with undeniable polish and style, an accompanying illustrated instruction booklet describes it as "...an adventuresome TRIANGLE-SEEK set in that place just beyond the farthest you've ever been. To avoid damaging your saved game, remember to hold the RESET button when turning the power off."

Beglitched (Alec Thomson, Jenny Jiao Hsia)
Beglitched is a game about insecurity, in our computers and ourselves. In a pastel world of networks where nobody truly knows what they’re doing, hacking is a magical art and the notorious Glitch Witch is the most premium archmagi of the net. By random circumstance, YOU are her new apprentice.

GNOG (KO-OP Mode)GNOG is about exploring giant monsters and their inner worlds. Each head is part of an interconnected world filled with tantalizing secrets. Created by Montreal’s experimental game collective, KO-OP Mode.

Strawberry Cubes (Loren Schmidt)Strawberry Cubes is an experiential open-world game which uses a cryptic set of glitches and magical transformations to abstractly evoke the feeling of losing a family member to alzheimer's disease.

A Good Snowman is Hard to Build (Alan Hazelden, Benjamin Davis & Ryan Roth)A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build is an adorable puzzle game about being a monster and making snowmen.

Versnoof (Kyle Reimergartin)
Fantastic Arcade award-winning developer Kyle Reimergartin and The Floor is Jelly creator Ian Snyder return with a game Reimergartin describes as "PARASITIC SYMBIOSIS AND PROPAGATION THROUGH PREEXISTING AMBULATORY MECHANISM". We describe it as an experiment that will create shimmering mnemonic architecture in your mind, as you navigate a labyrinth using only your sonar-like extra senses.

Froggy (Nathalie Lawhead)
In this "no holes barred froggame" you frog as FROGGY, a seasoned frog veteran with a strong inner-voice but no moral conviction, surviving one day at a time on Armageddon Highway.

Shelter 2 (Bastian Leonhardt Strube)
In Shelter 2, you play the life of a mother lynx, pregnant at first, giving birth and continuing in to a journey of parenthood where nurturing her four cubs is paramount for their survival.

The TAMPERDROME COLLECTION (G.P. Lackey)The TAMPERDROME COLLECTION is a suite of procedural generation experiments which allows you to create random dogs, islands, ghosts, cats, and other strange things.

Dozens of additional games will be added to the full Fantastic Arcade lineup within the coming weeks. Special tournaments and exposition plays will also be revealed, alongside this year's Gamemaking Frenzy theme.

This year all these games will be playable throughout all of Fantastic Fest, from September 24th to October 1st. Fantastic Arcade events, talks, and tournaments will takeplace at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, free of charge, from September 28th through October 1st.